We bought a "new" second hand bike for my son the other day, a nice 2022 Cannondale hardtail. Looking it over I negotiated the price down due to the rear hub and freewheel being really rough and the chain and sprockets were worn out. The rest seemed to be fine as far as I could tell.
Back home I've stripped the rear hub and discovered it's drier than a desert in there, the freewheel is also completely shot.
After cleaning the races and the bearings I packed it with grease and popped it all back together. Then I fitted this little lot which included a brand new freehub body.
It was at this point that it all went pear shaped. I'd been umming and ahhing about whether to service the forks, in the end, given the state of the hub I decided I'd better. First things first was to drop the lower legs and it was then that I uncovered a horror show. The foam rings were beyond dried out and were completely broken down and stuck in one fork leg. The worst horror though was on the upper leg, adjacent to the crusty foam ring, were it must have been sat unused for a long time it was corroded.
This was really low down and under the level of the outer dust seal when the bike was sat unsagged, so I had completely missed it, I was really annoyed and angry, but I was in too deep now. Given its location, really low down, adjacent to the foam ring, I figured it wouldn't have too major an affect on the performance of the forks. So I decided to plow on and rub it lightly over with 2000 grit paper and Isopropyl. You can feel one or two small nicks with your nail, but hopefully we should be OK.
So I'm going for a full 200 hour service for these forks and I have the full service kit.
With the lower legs, dust seals and foam rings removed, it's time to move on to the air damper assembly and we soon have the internals on my bench. The oil and grease have turned a bit sticky, but it's really not too grim. I soon have it all cleaned up and new O rings installed.
So on to the damper assembly tomorrow, but that's all for tonight.